Democracy Now! Blog

As Spain’s prime minister announced deep austerity cuts Wednesday in order to secure funds from the European Union to bail out Spain’s failing banks, the people of Spain have taken to the streets once again for what they call “Real Democracy Now.”

If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.

“I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” William A. Clark reportedly said. He was one of Montana’s “Copper Kings,” a man who used his vast wealth to manipulate the state government and literally buy votes to make himself a U.S. senator. That was more than 100 years ago, and the blatant corruption of Clark and the other Copper Kings created a furor that led to the passage, by citizen initiative, of Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act in 1912. The century of transparent campaign-finance restrictions that followed, preventing corporate money from influencing elections, came to an end this week, as the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed the Montana law.

Gen. John Allen, commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke Wednesday at the Pentagon, four stars on each shoulder, his chest bedecked with medals. Unlike Allen, many decorated U.S. military veterans left the streets of Chicago after the NATO summit without their medals.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan. Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are now challenging the occupation of Chicago. This week, NATO is holding the largest meeting in its 63-year history there. Protests and rallies will confront the two-day summit, facing off against a massive armed police and military presence.

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an "extraordinary event." That is what the city of Charlotte, North Carolina called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second largest bank in the US (after JP Morgan Chase), claiming more than $2 trillion in assets. It is also the "too big to fail" poster child of Occupy Wall Street, a speculative banking monstrosity that profits from, among other things, the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the exploitation of dirty coal.

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Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained—sometimes at gunpoint—and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer.

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman will speak on Sunday, April 22 at 2pm on the Green Festival Main Stage at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 11th Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets, in New York City.

Tune in tonight to see Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman as she moderates a panel that kicks off the Foundry Theatre’s “This Is How We Do It: A Festival of Dialogues About Another World.” She will speak with activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs, who says, “we have the power within us to create the world anew.”

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.